Unveiling Retail Investor Behavior in Japan's Stock Market
Introducing Datago's Retail Investor Sentiment Analytics-Japan (RISA-Japan)
In February 2024, the Nikkei 225 stock average surpassed its 1989 peak, a milestone hailed by traders, analysts, and market historians as the end of Japan’s post-bubble era. Amid widespread excitement, many celebrated Japan’s long-awaited economic revival—34 years in the making.
In alignment with these expectations, retail investors in Japan have also regained their confidence in the stock market. As prolonged deflation transitions into moderate inflation, household investors are increasingly shifting from cash savings to riskier investments in a bid to protect their wealth from inflationary pressures.
Indeed, the number of individual shareholders in Japan has been steadily climbing to record highs. Meanwhile, research reveals that the average shareholding per investor is decreasing, signaling the expansion of the small shareholder demographic. According to publicly available data from the Japan Exchange Group, retail investors accounted for 38.1% of Japan’s stock market trading volume in 2024.
In addition, with further adjustments and expansions to the Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA)—a policy designed to encourage Japanese households to allocate more funds to higher-risk asset classes like equities—the market anticipates an even greater influence from retail investors moving forward.
Empowering Insights into Japan’s Retail Investors
Datago continues to position itself at the forefront of information innovation. Building on the success of its prior datasets, Datago has identified the hidden potential of Japan’s retail investors and is dedicated to harnessing this power for equity market analytics.
We are excited to introduce the Retail Investor Sentiment Analytics-Japan (RISA-Japan) dataset. This groundbreaking dataset aggregates insights from Yahoo! Japan, one of Japan's most popular stock forums, where over 700,000 retail investors actively discuss more than 5,000 Japanese securities. With a time span of over a decade, RISA-Japan leverages Datago’s proprietary natural language processing (NLP) model to perform highly accurate and granular sentiment analysis on forum posts. The dataset provides sentiment and popularity metrics for each stock and individual post.
Additionally, Yahoo! Japan offers a unique feature that allows users to disclose their stock ratings when discussing securities. These ratings—categorized as Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell—provide valuable insights into investor sentiment and help other users better evaluate stocks. This information is separately recorded in the RISA-Japan dataset for reference and analysis.
Key Features and Advantages of RISA-Japan
Specifically, RISA-Japan offers the following advantages:
1. Representativeness
RISA-Japan draws on discussions from Yahoo! Japan, part of the most-visited web platform in Japan. The dataset includes analysis of 125 million posts dating back to 2012, providing comprehensive coverage of retail investor sentiment for over 5,000 Japanese securities, including 4,500 stocks. This extensive scope delivers a representative and holistic view of Japan’s retail investors’ opinions.
2. Accuracy
The sentiment model underlying RISA-Japan has been meticulously trained to account for local language nuances, including internet slang and emoticons, which are commonly used by retail investors in online discussions. This ensures industry-leading accuracy in sentiment analysis, capturing the true tone and intent behind each post.
3. Rich Data Fields
Beyond aggregate sentiment and popularity statistics, RISA-Japan provides record-level data with granular details about individual posts and users. This enables clients to:
Customize novel analytics tailored to their specific needs.
Dive deeper into user-level sentiment trends.
Perform fine-grained analysis on securities of interest.
Backtesting Performance
To validate the dataset, Datago conducted internal backtesting using a single field from the RISA-Japan dataset.
With the revival of Japan’s equity markets and the growing influence of retail investors, RISA-Japan equips clients with the tools to navigate these dynamic changes and make data-driven investment decisions.
Contact Datago at info@datago.com.hk for more information about Retail Investor Sentiment Analytics-Japan (RISA-Japan).